Boca Raton, Fla.-based American Media has purchased
Weider Publications' (Nasdaq: WNI) muscle and fitness magazines for $350 million, according to a Nov. 27,
article in
The New York Times.
American Media bought the magazines
Muscle & Fitness,
Shape,
Flex,
Fit Pregnancy,
Natural Health and
Men's Fitness, but it didn't acquire Weider's vitamins and nutrition business. The
Times says this is 2002's largest merger or acquisition transaction in the magazine industry. “With this purchase, we will go from $375 million in revenues to $550 million and we want to be over a billion in the next five years,” American's CEO David Pecker told the
Times.
At the time of the sale, the Weider magazines were expected to generate FY02 earnings of approximately $27.5 million; American Media paid nearly 13 times that figure. “It's a pretty robust price in this environment,” Morgan Stanley analyst David Allen told the Times. “I think it is a sign that people still see value in the publishing space.”